sion itself, which had its chapel,
refectory, and baptistry, and in all its details it resembled closely a
parish church of Italy of Spain.

The mission was usually laid out in the form of a hollow square,
inclosed by a wall of adobe, twelve feet high, the whole inclosure
being two or three hundred feet square. In the center of this square
was a chapel, also of adobe; for the sun of California is kind to
California's children, and a house of dried mud will withstand the
scanty rains of a century. Some of these old chapels are still used,
but the roofs of most of them have long since fallen in, and the
ornaments have been removed to decorate some other building. The
mission churches were built like mimic cathedrals, cathedrals of mud
instead of marble, and, like their great models, each had its altar,
with candles and crucifix, its vessels of holy water, and on the walls
the inevitable paintings of heaven and purgatory. Their most charming
feature was the arched cloister, a feature which has been retained and
beautified in the architecture of Leland Stanford Jr. University, at
Palo Alto.

Each church, too, had its little chime of bells, some of which were
partly of gold or silver, as well as of brass. During the early
enthusiasm, when the mission bells were cast, old heirlooms from Spain,
rings, vases, and ancestral goblets from which had been "drunk the red
wine of Tarragon," were thrown into the molten metal. And when these
consecrated bells chimed out the Angelas at the sunset hour, with the
sound of their voices all evil spirits were driven away, and no harm
could come to man or beast or growing grain.

"Bells of the past, whose long-forgotten music
Still fills the wide expanse,
Tingeing the sober twilight of the present
With color of romance;

I hear you call, and see the sun descending
On rock and wave and sand,
As down the coast the mission voices blending,
Girdle the heathen land.

"Within the circle of your incantation
No blight nor mildew falls,
Nor fierce unrest nor sordid low ambition
Passes those airy walls.

Borne on the swell of your long waves receding
I touch the farther past.
I see the dying glow of Spanish glory,
The sunset dream and last.

* * * * * *

"Your voices break and falter in the darkness,
Break, falter, and are still,
And veiled and mystic, like the Host descending,
The sun sinks f